


Let's Hang Out

by Control_Room, Random_ag



Series: Tortured Tales [1]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine, The Man With Eyes - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Family, Gen, Hanging, Happy Ending, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Suicide Attempt, Whump, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27673034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Control_Room/pseuds/Control_Room, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: There was such a scream, like one never heard before.
Relationships: Kim Grosso/Niamh O'Flannel
Series: Tortured Tales [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023520





	Let's Hang Out

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: attempted suicide and description of asphyxiation. stay safe!  
> prompt: hanging

Niamh’s scream rattled the very walls of the studio. It was a scream so unlike any other: not enraged; not excited; nothing they had ever heard before; that everyone froze, looked at one another, dropped what they had been doing, and ran to where the scream originated. Among the first there was Kim, Wally (who had been working on the same floor and now was certain his ears were bleeding slightly), and Norman, who had the strange tendency to appear when he was needed - or unwanted. 

Surprisingly, Wally, sent into a shock, took command, swinging into action while Kim stared with eyes larger than a witch’s cauldron in a stupor, while Niamh took in a shuddering breath, one after another, swallowing down air and gulping it with an impossible difficulty as if breathing in magma, hot at burning, and tried to look away, finding her own neck and eyelids unresponsive to her internal screaming demand, and Norman froze in place, a ghost of a smile fading away from his face. 

“Norman, get Henry, if you see Willy, don’t let him come in,” Wally ordered, pushing the man. “Kim, I’m gonna pick him up so you can get that crate, get up there, and loosen the rope, _now._ We don’t have time for gawking, move!”

The dancer snapped out of his horrified trance: he nearly hauled the crate over his head in the haste, desperate, forcing his throat shut to submerge an atrocious howl building inside his very soul. He shoved the wooden object close enough and climbed onto it with an unsteady frame; every single part of him was shaking as if electrified.

“Breathe, Kim, dammit,” Wally snarled, hoisting up the factotum’s thin frame to allow the rope to slacken, “you too, Niamh, it won’t do any of us good if you both pass out as well!”

“What’s going on in here?” Joey’s voice, worried and soft, came through the hall. Wally looked at Niamh with a panic, gesturing his head in the direction of the door, signalling she stop Johan from entering. The fewer people the better.

In some way, she did register his order through the pinkish white haze of the shock. She stood up on large unsteady legs and marched to her boss. Her hands snared his hips, lifted his wiry body as if it had been a little straw puppet, and gracelessly escorted him away, just as Norman and Henry dashed by. 

“Wait!” Johan managed to squeak, his hands pushing on her pale shoulders as he tried to catch a glimpse of both the room he was being dragged away from and the woman’s face, “Wait, Niamh, what happened? What’s going on in there?”

He did not get a response, but he did finally take a good look at Niamh’s face.

Her face was screwed into an anguished grimace, cheeks covered in sparkling salt and pale enough to see her muscles twitch beneath the skin.

She was crying.

She did not fight when he pressed on her wrists, a silent request to be put down to which she obliged immediately. He pulled a silky soft kerchief from his sleeve like some sort of magician, passing it over her fact to dry her of her tears. 

“It’s gonna be alright, okay?” Joey assured her, his worried red eyes flashing this way and that, laser pointers soaking in as much detail as they could. “Is it… please tell me it’s not Eska.”

Her lip twitched and trembled; Niamh opened her mouth to speak, but her voice was pushed back into her lungs. She could feel the ivy’s broad leaves blocking every breath of air trying to enter or leave her body. She tried again, and another time; nothing.

“Shit,” Joey breathed - and so rarely was it that Johan cursed that Niamh’s shock became manifold for a moment, until his hand shot out to block Willy’s path, having spotted the man from the very corner of his eye. “Hey, hey, both of you, it-t’s going to be okay, Willy, don’t go in there please. Niamh, shove your olfactory senses into Willy’s hair. Th-that should help.”

Not too far away came a scream louder than even Niamh’s; it didn’t sound like anybody’s voice, shrill, and loud, and desperately relieved deep somewhere inside of it.

Niamh turned to it, drawn to the alien cry like a moth to flame. She began stumbling back from where she had come from in the way a sleepwalker searches in vain for their dream across their house; Willy intercepted her, blocking her in an embrace just low enough for her face to be caught in the lavender cloud that were his curls. She held him back by reflex, but her eyes remained fixed on the door.

“Are ya calm?” He murmured in question. “I’m worried about him too, but we’ve gotta trust that the doc’s got the shebang under control.”

She managed a wheeze in response, but nothing else.

***

Eska awoke with hazy vision, to the feeling of being swayed back and forth, back and forth, like in a cradle, and to a strangled sobbing in his ears. He watched with vague awareness the known faces blurring in and out of focus. He felt tired, and his throat had the consistency of a creek with no water under his tongue.

“You’re a miracle worker, Stein,” Norman noted, leaning back with a sagging relief. “I thought… you know. The face would match the mask.”

“No miracles here, just thank god for the timing and ventilation in here. He’ll live but surely needs some care.”

The handyman’s head fell a little to the side. Slender fingers used to sewing and stuffing plushies caught it in a panic, and he leaned into the gentle touch. He recognized them; oh, he thought, suddenly realizing there was a body propping up his own and holding him in place from which the sobs kept spurting. It was Kim.

Kim nearly screamed again when he heard him purr as if nothing had happened.

“Don’t you-” his voice was wobbly and high pitched; it would take him hours to get it back down, but that was the least of his problems. “Don’t you f-f’kin’... _purr_ at me of all things, you j… you j…”

He did not manage to complete his sentence. He was not sure he really even wanted to. He buried his face in the factotum’s hair and dampened it with tears. A comforting hand touched his shoulder, two tired dark faces meeting and acknowledging a pain and worry they shared. Niamh entangled herself into Kim’s chest, wrapping an arm around Eska’s middle and pulling them all close. She resorted to soaking Kim’s shirt with her half silent sobs.

Eska’s arms twitched softly, moving in an awkward stilted way to embrace them back himself. The feeling of being held drowned out the horrid recollection of what should have been his last moments breathing: he could not remember the lack of air, the pressure on his neck, a short lived weightlessness accompanied by sparks of black and white; there was only a gentle presence wrapping around him, protecting him from something far and unknown. Together the three closest to him created a barricade of protection, blocking a disturbing world from crawling into him like a hissing leach in the mud.

Kim could see Johan collapse onto Henry with racking tremors of stress exerting itself outwards from his body, and the animator led him out of the room, whispering comforts. Clearly they were not the only ones feeling stressed. Willy desperately wanted a cup of chamomile or Allison’s jasmine tea, and the desire was absolutely shared by the whole group.

“Tea?” Eska rumbled quietly, his voice a little rougher than usual, looking at Willy. Willy, his lower lip trembling, nodded. Kim and Niamh rose to allow the skeletal man to get up. Willy inhaled slowly, and exhaled even slower, looking Eska in the eye. “We’re getting ya medical help. We are, and that’s final. We’re here for you, and I - we - can’t lose you. We can’t. You’re important to us ta all of us. Do you understand me? We love ya, and you almost ripped out all our hearts with what ya just pulled. Never do that again - come to one of us if you need help, if ya feel bad, but please, for the love of _us,_ don’t do that never, ever again.”

Eska replied to his gaze with dull eyes. A shiver took hold of his entire frame, and he gripped a little tighter on his parents’ bodies to keep himself from falling. His breaths were noisy and slow, much like his movements.

His head swayed weakly for a couple moments (perhaps to fight the strange vertigo that comes when standing up causes the vision to black out with grey static-like patterns).

Help.

He needed help, medical help, special help, immediate help.

His head fell downwards in a feeble, tired nod.

He wanted help.

His family gave it with open arms.


End file.
